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Caucuses Empower Only Some Iowans

DES MOINES — Jason Huffman has lived in Iowa his whole life. Lately he has been watching presidential debates on the Internet, discussing what he sees with friends and relatives. But when fellow Iowans choose among presidential candidates on Thursday night, he will not be able to vote, because he is serving with the National Guard in western Afghanistan.

“Shouldn’t we at least have as much influence in this as any other citizen?” Captain Huffman wrote in an e-mail interview.

He is far from the only Iowan who will not be able to participate. Because the caucuses, held in the early evening, do not allow absentee voting, they tend to leave out nearly entire categories of voters: the infirm, soldiers on active duty, medical personnel who cannot leave their patients, parents who do not have baby sitters, restaurant employees on the dinner shift, and many others who work in retail, at gas stations and in other jobs that require evening duty.

As in years past, voters must present themselves in person, at a specified hour, and stay for as long as two. And if these caucuses are anything like prior ones, only a tiny percentage of Iowans will participate. In 2000, the last year in which both parties held caucuses, 59,000 Democrats and 87,000 Republicans voted, in a state with 2.9 million people. In 2004, when the Republicans did not caucus, 124,000 people turned out for the Democratic caucuses.

The rules are so demanding that even Ray Hoffman, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and a resident of Sioux City, cannot caucus on Thursday night, because he has to be in Des Moines on party business.

Iowans begin the presidential selection process, making choices among the candidates that can heavily influence how the race unfolds. Now some are starting to ask why the first, crucial step in that process is also one that discourages so many people, especially working-class people, from participating.

“It disenfranchises certain voters or makes them make choices between putting food on the table and caucusing,” said Tom Lindsey, a high school teacher in Iowa City. Mr. Lindsey plans to attend this year, but his neighbors include a cook who cannot slip away from his restaurant job on Thursday night and a mother who must care for her autistic child.

Caucuses are quirky electoral creations that depart from the usual civics-class ideas about fair elections. They are run not by the government, but rather by the state Democratic and Republican Parties. The 1,781 caucuses that take place around the state are small community meetings in which citizens gather not only to choose candidates but also to conduct local party business. Rather than secret ballots, there are public exchanges of opinions.

While the Republican caucuses are fairly simple — voters can leave shortly after they declare their preferences — Democratic caucuses can require more time and multiple candidate preferences from participants. They do not conform to the one-person, one-vote rule, because votes are weighted according to a precinct’s past level of participation. Ties can be settled by coin toss or picking names out of a hat.

As states jostled for early voting positions in the presidential contest now getting under way, there was loud debate about whether Iowa, mostly rural and white, should be first in line. But “just as nonrepresentative as Iowa is of the country, Iowa caucusgoers are nonrepresentative of Iowa as a whole,” said Samuel Issacharoff, who teaches election law at New York University.

To many Iowans, the caucuses are a civic treasure, passed down from the farmers who introduced them nearly two centuries ago as a way of organizing themselves politically. In presidential election campaigns increasingly dominated by sound bites and slick advertisements, the caucuses promote in-depth discussion of issues and earnest exchanges among neighbors. Because the caucus rules are more onerous than those of regular elections, the meetings tend to attract passionate, well-informed voters.

“It’s magic to see people stand up and declare their support for a candidate, and it’s a community activity,” said Gordon Fischer, a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Photo

Nick Okland, a worker at Centro, a restaurant in Des Moines, would like to participate in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday but like many other people cannot because he will be on the job.Credit
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

But many Iowans have been dutifully watching presidential candidates all summer and fall only to find themselves unable to participate on caucus night. Take Sally Kreamer, a single mother in Johnston, outside Des Moines, who says she cannot escape the pull of her children’s dinner and homework. “I would love to participate,” Ms. Kreamer said.

Or Carrie Tope, who works at a hospital emergency room in Ames and cannot find anyone to take her shift. She particularly wants to vote this year, she said, because things are so close.

Even some campaign volunteers “have bosses who say, ‘We really need you at work that night,’” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, state director for John Edwards. “Unfortunately, they just aren’t going to be able to participate,” she said.

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Scott Brennan, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said the party had no responsibility to ensure that voters can caucus. “The campaigns are in charge of generating the turnout,” Mr. Brennan said, and the voters who truly care will find their way to their local caucuses.

As for Ms. Tope, the emergency room worker, “there’s always the next cycle,” Mr. Brennan said.

Mr. Hoffman, his Republican counterpart, said he was resigned to the system’s inequalities. “That’s just the way it works,” he said. (His own lack of participation is fine, he said, because he is neutral in the race.)

Legally the issue falls into a murky area. The Constitution promises no affirmative right to vote, just assurances that specific categories of people cannot be excluded. And because the parties do not collect demographic data, no one really knows who does and does not participate. Besides, since the caucuses are run not by government but instead privately by the parties, the courts are reluctant to intervene in all but the most egregious cases.

Changing the rules might mean giving up Iowa’s treasured first-in-the-nation status and also the attention that candidates lavish on it. Iowa’s switching to a more formal, primary system could violate New Hampshire’s self-proclaimed mandate to be the first primary state, undercutting the informal compact between the two.

“There is no incentive for Iowa to change this at all,” said Mr. Issacharoff, of N.Y.U. “It corresponds to what Iowa wants, which is candidates spending time and resources in Iowa,” in order to win supporters dedicated enough to conquer the obstacles to voting.

So in order to preserve their early voting opportunities, Iowa party leaders must defend a system that excludes many of the state’s people from voting.

Occasionally there is a voice of dissent. Just before the 2004 caucuses, a video surfaced in which Howard Dean, then a front-runner for the Democratic nomination, questioned whether caucuses allowed as much participation as they might.

“Say I’m a guy who’s got to work for a living, and I’ve got kids,” Mr. Dean said on the tape, from an interview that had taken place in 2000. “Do I have to sit in a caucus for eight hours?”

Mr. Dean’s opponents accused him of insulting the caucus process. He finished third.

Now caucus mania is sweeping the state again, leaving some voters to observe closely a process they say is closed to them. In recent weeks, Nick Okland has taken orders from Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Christopher J. Dodd at Centro, a sleek Italian restaurant in Des Moines. Mr. Okland would like to vote for Representative Ron Paul, he said, but he is putting himself through college and needs the busy night’s tips.

“We wait on all of them,” he said, “and then we can’t go caucus.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Caucuses Give Iowa Influence, But Many Iowans Are Left Out. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe